Final answer:
Cultural evolutionism is the generalizing, comparative, and theory-building part of cultural anthropology that explains how cultures change over time using an evolutionary framework.
Step-by-step explanation:
The generalizing, comparative, and theory-building part of cultural anthropology is known as cultural evolutionism. This approach, often associated with 19th-century anthropologists, uses evolution to explain how cultures change over time. The work in this area makes extensive use of comparative methods to understand the development and adaptation of cultural forms, and it situates particular cultural phenomena within a broader evolutionary framework.
Modern cultural anthropologists continue to apply generalizing and comparative methods to build theories that explain human behavior and cultural variation. Anthropological theory has evolved to address contemporary global issues like social inequality and climate change, incorporating holistic techniques of examination and analysis to understand how elements within a culture coexist and provoke change.